You’ll shoot your eye out with this laser-filled tennis ball

[Matt Leone] recently took his passion for lasers over the top and built a little something called the Laser Ball. Fed up with the deluge of of LED cubes floating around online, he says that the Laser Ball is the new sheriff in town – and we’re inclined to agree.

He bored a bunch of holes in a standard tennis ball, and fitted it with 14 red laser diodes. Before he installed the lasers into the ball he modified each with a small bit of diffraction grating to liven up the display. The lasers were connected to a Teensy micro controller, which was stuffed inside the ball along with a small rechargeable LiPo battery.

While the laser ball was pretty awesome already, [Matt] decided that it wasn’t finished just yet. Using an IR remote package from Adafruit, he added the ability to trigger the Laser Ball’s light patterns from afar. You know, just for kicks.

The “xLab(s)” people arent usually affiliated with “real” labs sure, but the people who are probably aren’t allowed to say so unless they work for a super cool company. An easy distinction for the OCD in you.

Since we’re on the subject, can hackerspaces count as labs? If so I could be an i3 lab tech if I spent any time there

Great documentation. Those songs fit it perfectly, I especially like when the slow, depressing part of the music coincided with the wire mishap. I think this could be marketed and sold at laser light shows. They could toss it around the crowd.

Great job on the project, and very nice work time compressing the video too. This looks like something we’d see Hollywood using, great for special effects. And if you hang one from a small helium balloon using a black thread and let it float over a housing tract at night I wonder how many UFO reports it would generate?!